


So Pathetic and So Lovely

by alekszova



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, One Shot, Post-Canon, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 06:01:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16886976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alekszova/pseuds/alekszova
Summary: Neither Gavin or Connor think they are capable of being loved by the other, but that doesn't mean it's true.





	So Pathetic and So Lovely

**Author's Note:**

> “We are not broken things, neither of us. We are cracked pottery mended with lacquer and flakes of gold, whole as we are, complete unto each other. Complete and worthy and so very loved.”  
> The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue - Mackenzi Lee

Here is the problem with Connor:

He, for starters, is a fucking android.

He’s turned into a weird fucking detective.

He keeps looking at Gavin with the same blank expression.

After all he did? After all that happened? The punch and the bullet and the yelling and the harsh words and all Connor fucking gives him is that same blank expression over and over again like none of it happened. Like nothing matters. Like it might has well not have happened.

 

Here is the problem with Gavin:

He’s a piece of shit. Awful. Truly a terrible human being. Hates androids because they get in his way, because they threaten to take his job, because they keep looking at him with that same blank expression over and over again.

He can’t even look at himself in the mirror. He knows what a horrendous person he is by just looking in the mirror.

He is unlovable. Clearly and deeply and entirely so.

 

“Detective Reed? I’ve been assigned a case with you.”

_Shit. Fuck. What the fuck. Why._

“Great,” he says, and he stands. “Just what I fucking need.”

 

Connor used to be a great detective—before he deviated and all that shit. Gavin knows by looking over the files of the cases he had with Hank. He solved them within minutes. No problem. If the androids hadn’t revolted, if they hadn’t been given their rights and changed the world, they would have been fucked.

Connor was nearly perfect. _Nearly._

But now?

Emotions get in the way. He watches Connor as he stops, takes a breath every few minutes before moving onto to the next part of the crime scene. It takes him five times as long to comb through every piece.

Still.

It’s less work for Gavin.

He should be grateful. Instead, it is simply painful to watch. The deaths are tallying up in Connor’s head, they are weighing him down. Blood splatters are no longer just drops of DNA or Thirium on floors or against walls. They belong to people. They symbolize a loss of life.

 _This,_ he thinks, _is unsustainable._

 

Here is the problem with Connor:

He’s too fucking _nice_.

 

Here is the problem with Gavin:

He is too fucking _cruel_.

 

“Coffee?”

He looks up from his paperwork. It’s been sitting there for hours untouched, and that is only it’s time for today. It was set on his desk two days ago after his case. He just can’t be bothered to fill out all the little details. It makes him want to scream.

“What the fuck did you say?”

Connor gives him the same blank look for a solid two seconds before his lips move slightly in the barest smile in the entire world.

“I brought you coffee,” he says, setting the cup down. “You look tired. You haven’t been getting much sleep, have you?”

“None of your fucking business,” he says, and he takes the coffee from the corner of his desk, turns it just enough to confirm what he already knew. The side bares the dark purple logo of the café down the street that he never gets to go to.

He wants to drop it in the trash. It’s his first instinct. Get it the fuck away from him. He doesn’t need acts of kindness right now. He doesn’t need them from Connor. He doesn’t _need_ anything, especially not from a fucking android.

But he can’t, because it’s his favorite coffee place. Because he hasn’t been there in two months because work is too busy and he doesn’t have the time to walk down the street and wait in line anymore and it costs too much for him to keep putting his money towards it. He’s suffered from the shitty coffee in the breakroom for months now.

But he wants to dump it. He wants it away from him. He doesn’t want it at all.

“You should try and go to sleep earlier,” Connor says, and he steps away from the desk, his voice growing quieter as he leaves. “And perhaps cut out some of the unhealthier foods in your diet.”

He scoffs.

And then he drops the coffee in the bin next to his desk.

_Fuck off._

 

 

He thinks about it all the time. Every night. He pulled the trigger with barely a second thought. He didn’t give a shit if Connor was dead or alive. Who fucking cares? He’s just an android. He’d seen him come back before, so it wasn’t even like this would be something _permanent—_

But he thinks about it every night, covering his face with his pillow, muffling his scream into the fabric.

He wishes he hadn’t done that. He regrets every second of it.

 

Here is the problem with Connor:

He is _persistent_.

 

Here is the problem with Gavin:

He is _stubborn_.

 

“Good morning, Detective Reed.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Gavin sighs. “Get off my desk.”

Connor slides off the side of his desk, holds out the cup of coffee towards him, “I thought you’d like this.”

Some small part of him is on a loop saying that this is a peace offering, that he should accept it, that the two of them could forget everything that happened and start over again.

Is that what Connor wants? To start over again? To pretend that Gavin never punched him, never shot him?

How incredible that would be. How life changing. How magnificent to forget the look of silver chips and boards and the spill of blue blood across the archive room floor.

Connor should not be the one with the peace offering. It should be Gavin.

“I don’t want it.”

“It’s your—”

“I don’t give a shit,” he says, shrugging. “I quit coffee. It’s bad for you. Too much sugar.”

Connor gives him that same weak smile he had before, “Okay. I’m sorry. I should have asked first.”

“Yeah, now would you fuck off? I’ve got work to do.”

“Of course,” he says, and he disappears to the other side of the room.

And Gavin cannot help but notice that the coffee has been left on the corner of his desk. Sitting there with Connor’s name scrawled across the side. He steps over to it, picks it up like it’s a bomb about to go off, inspects the way his name looks on the label. Big looping cursive, legible and spelled right. _Connor._ They can’t even get Gavin’s name right. It’s always Gayvin. Who the fuck is named Gayvin?

“Shit,” he whispers, and he sets the coffee back down again. _Shit. Shit. Shit._

 

Connor isn’t always there in the mornings, but the coffee is, and his name is always written on the side. He keeps running his fingers over the looping letters, _Connor. Connor. Connor._

What an absolute piece of shit.

 

Here is the problem with Connor:

He looks like _that._

 

Here is the problem with Gavin:

He looks like _that._

 

He goes to the gym more and more because Connor is pissing him off and he needs to hit something to get rid of whatever is boiling in his stomach. Fifteen minutes at the punching bag and he feels a little better. Fifty pushups and he feels a little bit better. Fifty extra pounds on the weight bench and he feels a little bit better.

Five seconds looking in the mirror and he feels a little bit worse.

 

Gavin is exhausted. Too much to even carry on a conversation. Too much to even talk to someone. Too much to keep his eyes open, despite the fact it’s barely ten at night. He falls asleep leaning against a stack of papers he should be filling out.

He wakes to the feeling of something resting on his shoulders. He can’t even bother himself to open his eyes the rest of the way. Only the blurry glance of his desk in disarray, the realization that he’d been dreaming, and he is out again.

When he wakes back up an hour later, he reaches backwards to his shoulder, touches the fabric of a jacket there. Gavin turns his head slightly, inhales the soft scent of laundry detergent and something else. Almost like a cologne. A heavy fragrance that he can’t name but it makes his stomach turn on itself.

He sits up the rest of the way, pulls the jacket from his back to his lip. He doesn’t need the neat little stitching, the perfectly embroidered letters and numbers, to know that it belongs to Connor.

When he finds Connor in the office, turned away from his desk and stabbing a tack through a piece of paper, his breath catches like a teenage girl seeing the football star for the first time. He has never, not a single time, seen Connor without the jacket on.

The shirt underneath looks a size too small, even though that must be impossible with the perfect nature of CyberLife, the neat crisp lines, the way the fabric pulls against his fake muscles—

_God._

Why the fuck did they have to do that?

 

 

Here is the problem with Gavin:

He is _broken_.

 

Here is the problem with Connor:

He is _lost_.

 

He takes the jacket from Gavin’s outstretched hand in complete silence. The building is almost entirely empty, besides the two of them. There’s another officer at their desk on the other side, but their eyes are glued to their screen. And, the two of them (almost) alone, don’t say a single word.

Connor wonders if he should. If perhaps right now would be the time he would explain himself. _You looked cold._ But Gavin didn’t look cold. It just felt like the right thing to do. Give him his jacket like a blanket. Maybe he just liked the idea of the way Gavin might look with it draped over his shoulders.

He watches Gavin’s gaze as it flickers from their hands, fingers briefly touching, to his eyes. Steel gray, the slightest shift of blue. In the fluorescent lights of the office, they are washed out and colorless. They move in a slow drift to his mouth and it lingers there.

His first thought: _please._

His second thought: _pleasepleaseplease._

The officer on the other side of the room coughs. Gavin looks back up, takes a step back, looks as if he’s going to say something before shaking his head and leaving.

His third thought: _come back._

 

Connor is not in love with Detective Gavin Reed.

He is lost, misplaced, somewhere else entirely. Everything inside of him since the moment he spoke to Markus has shifted. It’s like he was human, like he had a house, like he had organized everything into a perfect place and he left to get the mail at the end of the road and when he returned the house was rearranged. Not just the silverware in a different drawer or the couch against a different wall, but the boundaries too. The door has moved from the left of him to the right. There is a closet that didn’t exist before.

Markus took his insides, set them inside of a box, shook them so violently some of them broke and formed into something new.

Connor has no idea what he is now. He doesn’t know what to think.

All he knows is this:

Detective Gavin Reed is just as broken and lost as he is. He can see it in his eyes, in the way he moves, in the way he reflects and rejects and retorts.

So, no, Connor is _not_ in love with Gavin.

He is just stranded on the same road as him.

 

Here is the problem with Gavin:

He is a complete and utter _idiot_.

 

Here is the problem with Connor:

He is overly _amused_ by this.

 

Fatigue has settled over Gavin like snow on a winter evening. It coats everything it touches, hides the rest. He rests against his hand, his eyes barely open. He hasn’t made a single remark since Connor sat down opposite of him to delve through the files on their last case together.

Connor decides to count himself lucky by this. Gavin is too worn-out to work through this case quickly, he is hardly paying attention to anything he’s saying, but Connor’s words keep falling over themselves.

He is distracted by Gavin.

One part worry for how tired he seems, how unhealthy that must be.

The other part stuck on how Gavin looks in his glasses.

Connor knew before that Gavin wore them. They were listed in his file, one of the pictures attached to it was of him wearing them before he switched to contacts. But it slipped his mind. Fell through the cracks. It was a fact he knew of before he was a deviant, and not something he had thought about since.

Not until now.

“D-Did you…” he trails off, breathes in a deep breath. He doesn’t know why he’s so flustered by this. By Gavin.

Or, maybe he does. Gavin’s face isn’t exactly hideous but—

It shouldn’t do _this_ to him.

“Hmm?”

Connor looks away from his face, presses his lips together. He can’t do this. He can’t handle this right now, “Perhaps you should go home and rest, you look ill.”

“Ill?”

“Unwell. Sick. Ai—”

“I know what the fuck ill means, Connor,” he says, leaning back. “I feel fine.”

“You can’t even keep your eyes open. Go home. Get some rest. I can deal with the paperwork and we can pick up where we left off tomorrow.” _Take care of yourself, you idiot._

“Fowler—”

“I’ll let Fowler know I’m covering your shift and that you went home _sick.”_

He stresses the words, wants Gavin to understand what he means by it. That he’ll lie for him, that even if Gavin isn’t actually sick, he needs his rest, and Fowler might not understand overworking one self to the point of passing out, but he’ll believe whatever Connor says.

He isn’t a liar, after all—just a bad detective.

“I’m fine—”

“Gavin,” he says, and he leans forward a little bit, has to press his fingers flat against his knees to keep from reaching out to him, to hold his hand, to try and act like how a boyfriend or a spouse would trying to convince the other to take it easy. “It’s not a problem, I promise.”

“Okay, fine, whatever.”

Connor watches him leave, and he feels his face ache with the want to smile. He tries to shove it away like he always does, but it catches somewhere on the way down, and the corners of his mouth turn upwards in a weak attempt anyways.

 

“I don’t get you,” Gavin says, taking the coffee from his hand. He’s stopped tossing it in the trash a few weeks ago. It didn’t take much to break him down. Maybe next time Connor will push his luck—bring a muffin or some other type of breakfast food and get him to eat. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

Connor looks away from him to the floor, has to suppress the urge to shrug, to fold in on himself. He has no idea. He doesn’t understand why, but he feels like he is drawn to Gavin. Like they are the same thing, both _broken_ and _lost_ and trying to find themselves. Like they could find it between the two of them.

Or maybe he just likes Gavin.

Because he is stubborn and cold and an idiot and he for some reason really likes the look Gavin gets on his face when he scrunches up his nose and pushes aside paperwork or how peaceful he looks when he sleeps or—

God.

He doesn’t know.

He just really likes Gavin, against his better judgment.

“Easier for the work environment if we get along,” he says instead, and forces a small smile on his face. “Better than fighting, right?”

When he looks back up, he finds that Gavin is searching his face, trying to find something, landing on that LED and quickly away again. Connor feels the need to nod, _right, right, right._ He is an android. He will always be an android. There is nothing that will change that.

“Enjoy your coffee,” he says quietly, and he steps away from the desk, feeling something in his chest tumble around, itching to get out.

 

Here is the problem with Gavin:

He looks like _that._

 

Here is the problem with Connor:

He looks like _that._

 

He watches his face in the mirror, pulls back his skin slowly, just enough to see the blank whiteness of his face, split across like a mask. All of the grooves in the plastic where they line up, the numbers stamped along a section on his cheek.

After the revolution, androids changed. They became… odd. Bizarre. Different. All over the place. There is so much individuality in any single room. Androids still wearing their uniforms, androids that take their bands and place it over different clothing, androids that keep their LED, androids that keep their skin peeled back, exposing the shiny white surface of their plastic instead.

And Connor?

He has shed so many of his reminders of being a machine. He doesn’t want to pretend he’s human, but he doesn’t want to forget what he is, either. He runs his fingers over the LED, the shining yellow light. He doesn’t want it anymore, but it isn’t like the other markers on his clothes. Once he rids himself of this he won’t get it back.

He doesn’t want it. He keeps picturing the way Gavin looked at it. And he didn’t want it before that—he didn’t want it from the second he left the church with a plan in his head to infiltrate CyberLife tower—but Gavin every day reminds him that it’s still there.

That he is unlovable because of it.

“What are you doing?”

Connor sucks in a breath, lets the skin slip back into place, his fingers falling from the side of his temple, “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

He steps past Hank, moves back to the bedroom and closes the door behind him. His fingers itch to touch the LED again, to rip it out of his head. _He doesn’t want it anymore._ But he can’t help shake the feeling that if he gets rid of it, it will be because of Gavin.

He doesn’t want Gavin to be the reason.

 

Connor leans against the entrance to the gym, watches Gavin at the punching bag. It didn’t occur to him until now that he’s never seen Gavin without his trusty leather jacket, and here he is, tank top and sweatpants. There’s a scar across his upper-right arm, another one on his left shoulder, disappearing underneath the fabric of his shirt.

He knows how Gavin got them. He’s had his files, personal information spilled into his system in an effort to be able to create lasting relationships. He knows the the one on his right was from being shot at when he was fifteen years old and sneaking through an old man’s backyard. He knows the other is from slipping down a hill on a rainy evening, slamming down into a patch of rocks at the bottom.

Gavin was lucky to survive the fall. Barely didn’t hit his head against the rocks.

Barely.

“Detective Reed?” he says, stepping into the room. Each second he gets closer to him, the urge to reach up and touch his shoulder increases. He wants to trace that jagged scar. He wants to know exactly how it feels and the precise shape it makes in the arc across his skin.

Gavin sighs, lowers his fists, turns back towards him. Exhausted still, his hair wet with sweat, pushed back from his face. His shirt is plastered to his body, his fists curled at his sides.

This, Connor realizes, was a bad idea.

“What the fuck do you want?”

He’s looking at his neck. He’s watching it too closely. His brain is chanting _bad idea, bad idea, bad idea—_

But all he wants to do is step forward and kiss him. It’s such an impulsive thought he almost does it. His hands raise, he takes a step forward. He has to fold his fingers together in front of him to keep them from acting on their own.

“I was wondering if you would help me.”

“Help you?”

“I’m not a very good fighter,” he says. “I thought—”

“You thought I’d train you or something?”

Connor smiles, raises his shoulders in a small shrug.  He watches the corner of Gavin’s mouth twitch upwards and he bites it back down and looks away, “Okay. Yeah. Sure.”

 

Here is the problem with Gavin:

He, for starters, hates androids.

He overworks himself on every case, even though he pretends he doesn’t care a single bit about it.

He keeps looking at Connor with the same expression.

The one mixed with annoyance and frustration and loneliness and regret. The one that sometimes Connor catches just before he can shed it and replace it with a look of pure boredom. It is filled too full with too much to dissect and every time Connor sees it it makes his chest ache and his head throb.

 

Here is the problem with Connor:

He’s an android. Plastic and metal and wires.  He has an LED on the side of his head which he always catches glimpse of in shiny surfaces and it is always circling yellow, yellow, yellow.  And Gavin keeps looking at him with the same confused expression over and over again.

And Connor?

He is stupidly, ridiculously, falling hard for a human that hates androids. He looks in the mirror and he sees that LED and he is torn between carving it out of his skull and leaving it there and he can never settle on what to do.

 

He takes it easy on Gavin, because in reality he is an alright fighter and he doesn’t really need this training at all. CyberLife installed various forms of combat in his systems when they sent him to the DPD. It was necessary, and only to be used in the most dire circumstances. Even then, the majority of his knowledge isn’t even necessary when it comes to battle. He could operate solely in a defensive-mode. He knows how humans think, he knows what kind of attacks they would go for. He uses that to his advantage.

Connor’s problem is not at all about his fighting _skills,_ it is about his ability to follow through.

He cannot think about disarming someone, aiming a gun at them without thinking about those two soldiers he killed in the elevator at CyberLife Tower. He cannot see Thirium without thinking about how many times he has been shot in the head or the chest and bled out. He cannot even see a gun without thinking about how it felt in his hands when he executed those two Tracis.

When he trains with Gavin he hopes somehow it will fix the thing broken inside of him. Erase the bad memories, remind him of what he was built for. But he can’t let Gavin know how good of a fighter he is—

So he lets Gavin’s fist connect with his stomach, he lets an elbow hit him in the jaw, he lets his arm get twisted behind his back.

And he thinks about their fight in the archive room instead. How he failed before. How he practically allowed Gavin to kill him, like he couldn’t bring himself to try his absolute hardest.

Like even then, maybe he cared a little bit about some terrible, awful detective.

Connor turns his focus from fighting properly to Gavin’s expression instead. To dissect every minute detail in it. How little joy he is getting out of this. How little he actually wants to punch Connor and kick him and send him down to his knees.

Because he doesn’t want to? Because Connor is _deviant_ now? _Alive?_

“That’s enough,” Gavin says, pulling back, letting him go from where he is sprawled across the ground. “It’s—That’s enough for today, yeah?”

He is tired. Worn out. His chest is heaving for oxygen and his shoulders are sagging. How long have they been doing this? An hour? Two?

Connor sits up, nods slowly. _Okay. Okay._

 

He’s buttoning his shirt when he hears the loud clatter of something connecting to the tile. It echos around the locker room, filling the space too full with such a loud sound. Connor looks behind him, curiosity drawing his attention to the phone on the ground as Gavin bends over to pick it up, but his eyes aren’t on the screen as it lights up to double check that it hasn’t cracked but instead on the bruise blooming across Gavin’s side.

New. Fresh. _Recent_.

Connor’s hands fall from his half-buttoned shirt and he steps across the small space, reaching out to touch Gavin without thinking. His fingers brush across the red skin, the faint purple hue around the edges. He feels Gavin tense against his touch, but he can’t manage to bring his fingers away.

“Did I do this?” he asks quietly, but he already knows the answer. The bruise’s color isn’t purple enough to be from before today.

“Probably,” Gavin says, his voice just as quiet. “You kicked me pretty hard in the beginning.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he looks up from the bruise to his face.

Gavin’s eyes are stuck on his throat, where the collar of his shirt has been left open and exposed, where there is a few drops of blood smeared across his skin. _Blue._ Not red. Because he isn’t human. He’s an _android._ He pulls away quickly, retreating to the other side back to his locker, “Is your phone alright?”

“It’s—It’s—” Gavin sighs. “Cracked. It’s cracked.”

_Cracked._

Of course it is.

 

 

Here is the problem with Connor:

He is an android. Gavin is supposed to hate androids. He _does_ hate androids.

Doesn’t he? _Doesn’t he?_

 

Here is the problem with Gavin:

He doesn’t hate androids.

And he doesn’t hate Connor.

 

Gavin spends the night flipping through pictures on his tablet, scrolling through news stories. He avoided them like the plague when they first showed up back in November, but now he can’t keep himself from searching up the articles and the pictures.

_Detroit Police Department Has Acquired Prototype Detective – What This Could Mean For The Future Of Humanity._

_Detroit’s New Android Detective – All You Need To Know And More._

_Android Detective – Another Step Forward In The Replacement Of Humans In Our World._

_New RK800 Model – The End Of Humanity As We Know It?_

He scans the articles, barely latching onto any of the words. Instead, he looks for the pictures. The ones caught of Connor on his way out of the DPD. The ones at crime scenes with him and Hank. The ones of him walking the streets with the army of androids. Even ones caught from blurry security footage of him going to investigate the heist at Stratford Tower.

Gavin shuts off the screen, pushes it away from him, forces himself to breathe.

Inhale – _Connor is an android and you do not have feelings for him._

Exhale – _Connor is nothing but pieces of plastic and—_

Inhale – _Idiot. Idiot. Idiot._

Exhale – _Stop thinking about Connor._

 

He can’t stop thinking about Connor.

He can’t stop thinking about that strange scent of his jacket. How enticing it was. How much it seemed like a cologne, as if androids would care enough to spray themselves with _cologne_.

He can’t stop thinking about his fingers felt at his side against his bruise—how absolutely gentle they were, how soft and real they felt. Not like the hard hit of his fist in their fight. Not like the rigid edges that he expected.

He can’t stop thinking about his lips and his throat and the small section of his chest exposed with the shirt open like that—

And he can’t stop thinking about kissing him. In the station when they were (almost) alone. When they were in the locker room, so close together, so much of themselves stripped bare. They are the more tantalizing of his memories, they are the ones that torture him the most. Because, he thinks, if they had lingered for a second longer, if they had been completely alone, Gavin would have kissed Connor and he would have destroyed everything.

It would be better to forget them and favor the other fantasies instead. The ones where he walks into the precinct in the morning and knocks the coffee out of Connor’s hand and kisses him right then and there, when in reality he knows he never would. _Too many people._ It would be a mistake. _He would never._

But fucking hell—

He could entertain himself for hours with the thought of Connor bumping stuff off his desk in their rush to get close—

_Stop thinking about Connor._

 

Here is the problem with Connor:

He is _distracting._

 

Here is the problem with Gavin:

He is _distractible._

 

Gavin glances up from his desk towards Connor as he settles back down in his chair again. He tries to look away, but he can’t. There is something completely distracting about the way Connor looks when he’s working. The intense stare, the wrinkled brow. It is different than before, when he was just a machine. He had no change in his features then, unless he was actively talking with someone, his face was entirely blank.

And now there is so much behind every single thing he does. He can’t look away from him when he’s like this. When Connor turns slowly between two files, a thought running through his head, catching up with his movements, unfurling out into a theory. When he bites his lip, when his LED spins yellow, even though it seems to be perpetually stuck there, when he reaches up a hand as if to press out the lines of stress that gather there as if he’s a human and needs to worry about that type of thing—

Connor looks up suddenly, catching Gavin’s gaze and he feels something inside of him drop, but he can’t manage to make himself look away. The expression on Connor’s face is melting away, turning into something else.

It is not the blank stare he is usually given. It’s different somehow. Like he’s concerned.

 

It’s another late night. He watches Tina leave close to six to go on a date with her girlfriend. He watches Hank disappear at seven for what Gavin isn’t allowed to know is an AA meeting.  He even watches Chris leave at nine, thinking about how nice dinner with his wife must be.

But Connor stays.

And so does he.

Or, at least, Gavin _tries_ to stay, because he likes the idea of the two of them here alone. That they might spend a few hours apart but no one else will be there to stop him if his impulsive behavior gets the better of him.

But he realizes very quickly that the thought of being alone with Connor any more than he has to makes him want to scream, so he takes the stack of files on his desk and leaves before he can stop himself. He’ll get the work done at home where Connor’s presence won’t be so disruptive.

 

Here is the problem with Connor:

He is _unobtainable._

 

Here is the problem with Gavin:

He is _unwanted._

 

“Coffee?”

He’s stuck somewhere else. In a dream, still—not fully awake quite yet. He’s still thinking of that stupid dream. The one where Connor is sitting on the edge of his desk with the stupid cup held out and Gavin takes a step forward, his thoughts fuzzy, his hand coming up towards Connor’s face. Connor blinks. He doesn’t flinch, he doesn’t turn away, he _blinks._

If this was real, surely he would have flinched, surely he would have turned away, surely he would have fled, pushed back, fought. Gavin killed him. He punched him. They fought and Gavin won, isn’t that enough to warrant some hatred?

“Gavin?” he says, and his voice is low and quiet as his hand rests against Connor’s cheek, making a careful move down to trace the line of his jaw.

Cold plastic. The feeling is unmistakable, even if that layer of skin feels soft, has a slight give to it, it is undeniably plastic.

“Sorry,” he says, pulling his hand away, because Connor has never felt like that in a dream. He has always felt—

_Human._

“Sorry,” he repeats again, the reality of what he did sinking in now. _He touched Connor._ “I’m—I’m sorry—”

“Gavin, it’s—”

He turns and walks away before he can hear anything else that he might say. His face is heating up, he can feel tears springing to his eyes, his heart thundering in his chest. He is thankful that Connor doesn’t follow him out of the building. Gavin isn’t sure what he’ll do if he sees him again. The shame and the embarrassment is filling him so full he feels like he’s going to explode.

 

It’s weird training with Connor. If he can call it that. _Training_ seems like such a strange word. They aren’t learning anything from each other. They just throw punches, Gavin holding his back, Gavin thinking Connor is likely doing the same. It’s even weirder after he touched him.

Something has changed—shifted in a way that he doesn’t like. Connor keeps looking at him with a new expression that he can only think of as being _concerned_ but he knows it isn’t _concern_ because why would _Connor_ be _concerned_ about _him?_

Gavin really fucked things up. He fucked up everything. There isn’t any going back. There isn’t any changing the past. There is only dealing with this fucked up situation he’s caused. But he wants to undo it. He wants to go back. He wants to take the gun out of his hands and throw it across the room. He wants the archive room to disappear from his memory or end with him kissing Connor instead.

_God._

All he fucking wants to do is kiss Connor.

Or listen to him talk, watch him work, hold his stupid fucking hand, fall asleep with his head against his shoulder—

But who could ever love _him?_ Gavin is broken. He is stupid. He is worthless. He is unlovable.

 

Here is the problem with Connor:

He looks like _that._

 

Here is the problem with Gavin:

He looks like _that._

 

“You looking for this?” Gavin asks, picking up the tie from the ground, not quite holding it out to him. It slipped off the bench where Connor had carefully folded his clothes when they were changing. He still doesn’t understand why Connor bothers—it’s not as if androids sweat. It’s not as if his clothes will be ruined.

But then he thinks of the way his fingers felt delicate and soft against his side and he doesn’t care because he wants to feel that again. The gentleness with which Connor used when touching the bruise in such sharp contrast with the hit that created it.

“Yes,” Connor says, but he doesn’t make a move towards it. He just watches Gavin’s hand.

And then, because he’s impulsive, because he’s reckless, because he wants to see how far he can push the boundaries between them until they snap, he steps forward and loops the tie around his neck. He doesn’t know how to tie a tie, and he doesn’t know if he should bother, so instead he stands with his fingers held onto the ends fighting the urge to pull Connor down into a kiss.

And he does.

Almost.

_Almost._

But there is the sound of the door opening, of the chatter of other men as they file into the locker room and Gavin lets go, takes a step back, tries to decide if the interruption is a good thing or a bad thing.

 

He’s been told by a few people that his scar makes him prettier. Or, not _prettier_ but _interesting._ The scar doesn’t make him handsome, it doesn’t change the shape of his features, it just makes him more _interesting_ to look at.

Gavin hates it. He doesn’t even remember how he got it. He was too young when it happened. Not even four years old. His mother used to tell him a different version every night before he went to bed like he was the hero in a story.

_Once upon a time, there was a knight who fought a dragon and won._

_Once upon a time, there was a commoner who was secretly a prince._

_Once upon a time, there was an absolutely ordinarily extraordinary boy._

It always would end with the protagonist getting a scar. From a dragon’s claw, from the blade of an evil king’s sword, from the magnificent powers.

He never got the truth, and he stopped hearing the stories by the time he was old enough to want to know.

And now he hates it.

 

 

Here is the problem with Gavin:

He _killed_ him.

 

Here is the problem with Connor:

He doesn’t _care._

 

“Gavin?” Connor walks across the parking lot, quickening his pace as he makes his way over to Gavin’s car where he leans against it, tossing the last of his cigarette to the ground before stomping it out. He doesn’t realize until he’s a few yards away he has no idea why he came over here to begin with.

But he keeps thinking about that weight on the back of his neck, the pull of the tie, the fraction of an inch that his head moved with it towards Gavin.

“Yeah?”

“I—” he stops, half trailing off in the middle of his thought.

Because he’s not stupid. He’s not oblivious. He knows that he is not alone in this. He has thought about the expression Gavin gives him when he thinks Connor isn’t looking. He knows that look in his eye from ten minutes ago is the same that he had when they were alone at the station.

He knows Gavin wants to kiss him. He knows Gavin has feelings for him.

But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have doubts and fears about Gavin hating androids, hating Connor.

Humans are strange.

Physical attraction doesn’t always fit alongside _love_ and _romance._

But still. He knows Gavin likes him in some manner, and he doesn’t know how to say it back. He doesn’t know how to make sure Gavin can understand that even after all the terrible things that have happened between them he doesn’t _care._

Which is silly. And wrong. And stupid.

He _should_.

But things are not limited to just Gavin Reed. They get infected by everyone else, too. If he holds it against him, he has to hate Hank, too. He has to lose the people in his life that are the only thing he can hold onto.

He was just a machine. He is more now.

His hands shake as they come up, a subtle tremble as he undoes his tie, as he pulls it from around his neck and loops it around Gavin’s. He tries not to watch as his expression shifts, as Gavin’s body tenses, as he stands a little straighter.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m finishing what you started,” he says quietly, and he leans down and he kisses him.

No indecision. No more waiting. No more interruptions. Connor is tired of them always, always hesitating.

Gavin makes a small sound, something low and indiscernible. His hands are on his jacket, pulling him closer, closer, closer. And he can only think of what Gavin had said before—

_I’ve been dreaming about this since the first second I saw you._

He hadn’t said it as viciously or violently as he could have. It had been a simple statement. Just a fact. Nothing more. They had never been words that had haunted Connor because they never felt real. They never felt like Gavin meant them, even if he had. They weren’t said with enough anger to bother him.

 _God._ He hadn’t even understood what that really meant. To be dreaming about something, to want something that badly. Connor hadn’t even associated it with this, with something as simple as a kiss. He hadn’t realized how long he had wanted _this_ until now. That he had waited and waited for it longer than he even knew he was.

He pulls away, slowly, dragging this out up to the last second until they are forced to part. He brings up his hand, rests it against Gavin’s cheek the way Gavin had done before.

“Gavin, I—”

“You wanna come over tonight?” Gavin cuts him off, and then he looks away from Connor’s face like he hadn’t meant to say it.

He nods and smiles and _yes, yes, yes,_ that is all he wants.

 

Gavin is not delicate with him. He doesn’t treat Connor like he is made of glass. But he is cautious. He is careful. He isn’t rough, even though Connor wouldn’t mind if he was. He is a strange in-between—holding on tight but not violent about it. Gavin kisses him more than he thought he would. His jaw, his neck, his chest, his thighs.

Connor, in return, kisses him just as much. Little ones across the bruise on his side, along the inside of his arm, on his shoulder, against his cheeks, his nose. He for some reason feels like the two of them are on the verge of collapse and they will crumble into tears if they don’t fill the space with lips and words instead.

 

Here is the problem with Gavin:

He misjudges _everything_.

 

Here is the problem with Connor:

He overthinks _everything._

 

“It’s blue,” Gavin says quietly. His fingers move across Connor’s temple, pausing briefly for a second at the LED before moving away. “I haven’t seen it go blue in a while.”

Connor smiles a little, but he feels it fall away from him quickly. The LED doesn’t have a bright enough light that he notices it in the dark like this. It lets him forget it exists, that he has taken it out and left it behind like he always wants to, like he never will.

“I guess that means I like you then,” he whispers.

“Oh?” he replies. “You only find that out because of the LED?”

“No. A little bit before that.”

“When?”

_When._

He doesn’t know. It just crept up on him. The urge to be around him, to be friendly, to talk to him. There wasn’t a sudden realization. There was never a moment when he knew and it hit him like a jump scare in a horror movie. It was like waves when they wash up on shore, getting closer and closer to him, never quite seeming to recede all the way.

It is impossible to pinpoint. There are too many moments that he could list.

He settles for one—

“A few months ago,” he says, lifting his hand to drag his thumb across Gavin’s lips, they part and he leans closer, closer, closer. “You didn’t throw the coffee I gave you away.”

Gavin opens his mouth to reply, but Connor is tired of speaking. He has waited too long to kiss him, and if he talks anymore he thinks he might start to cry, so instead he kisses him again and he lets Gavin’s words be swallowed up inside of him.

 

“Do you want me to leave?”

“What?”

Connor sighs and looks over at the clock. It’s late. Later than Gavin should be awake. They both have work tomorrow, a day that threatens to spill over into a long night with how much work they left behind today to go to the gym and fight.

If he stays, Gavin will likely stay up far, far later than he should.

If he leaves—

It might break things. He knows how Gavin feels. He knows that Gavin likes him. He knows that this is what Gavin wants.

But he can’t guess what Gavin might think in the morning. If he will regret this. If he will realize that this _isn’t_ what he wants for more than one night.

Connor does not want to be a one-night thing.

“Should I go?” he asks, and he is impressed with his own ability to keep his voice from breaking like it tries to.

“I asked you to come over—”

“You didn’t ask me to stay the night.”

“It was implied.”

“Gavin—”

“If you don’t want to stay, you can leave,” he says, offering Connor a very weak smile. “I’m not going to force you to be here if you don’t want to.”

His chest hurts. A deep ache like his Thirium regulator has broken and his blood is pooling somewhere inside of him, but everything is fine. Everything is normal.

Feelings and emotions are not easy for him to understand, they are worse to grow used to. He can’t keep running diagnostics every chance he gets because of them.

“I do,” he finally whispers.

“Then stay,” Gavin replies, and he reaches out towards where Connor sits and pulls him back down again.

It is a quiet plea.

A _don’t leave_ printed between them in invisible letters, curling font. _Don’t leave._

He won’t.

 

Here is the problem with Gavin:

He looks like _that._

 

Here is the problem with Connor:

He looks like _that._

 

Androids do not _technically_ sleep, so he does not _technically_ wake to the sound of the alarm. He is simply alerted, plucked from the black of the numbness he was resting in. He doesn’t have to rub sleep from his eyes like Gavin, he doesn’t have to stretch out sore muscles or feel the need to let out a little groan of annoyance. He is just _awake._

And Gavin looks beautiful in this moment between dreams and consciousness. He doesn’t know what it is, really. There is an indescribable look on his face that just makes Connor smile. There is little wait for Gavin before he gets up. He doesn’t hit the snooze button like Connor would expect, he just sits up, his face in his hands as he looks from the bed to Connor.

“Hey,” he says quietly.

“Good morning.”

Gavin laughs and shakes his head, “Yeah. I guess so. I’m… I need to take a shower.”

“Is that an invitation?”

“Do you want it to be?”

 _Terrible._ Putting this on Connor. Making him be the one to do this, to say yes, to be the one to advance themselves further and further along.

“Yes.”

“Then I guess it is.”

 

The heat of the shower has left the room stuffy and humid and almost hard to breathe. Gavin takes one of the towels off the shelves, wrapping it around his waist and reaching for another, but when he turns back to Connor, he doesn’t hand it to him. He unfurls it and wraps it over Connor’s head like a hood, leaning up and kissing him tentatively. It’s different than the shower or the night before. It’s like every time they step from one room to the next their relationship is back in the balance of not existing and they have to confirm it again and again.

Or maybe they are just too new and started too strangely to be able to handle things like this. Holding hands and kissing sweetly and calling each other by nicknames.

Would they?

Could they?

“Gavin,” he says, pulling the towel back, knowing it is revealing that stupid LED he hasn’t gotten rid of yet because he is terrified of it. That it will hurt when it removes it, that it won’t be able to give him some insight on the turmoil wreaking havoc inside of him, that it will only be because he wants Gavin to like him a little more, to forget that he’s an android, to pretend that they’re human.

“What?”

“Do you—” he stops himself, looks away from Gavin towards the wall because he can’t voice the words. He can’t manage to get the idea out of his head that if he asks Gavin if he hates androids that he’ll say yes and he can’t—

He won’t be able to have this if the answer is yes. He won’t be able to have this if Gavin says _but not you._

“Connor,” Gavin says, and his voice is a little panicked, and his hands are on his face. “Are you alright?”

_No. No. No._

He can almost feel his insides aching, a physical pain like a breakage inside of him. _He’s fine._ Physically he is fine, even if his LED is likely red right now. If he were to run a diagnostic, it would almost certainly tell him that. It always does. _He’s fine._

But he isn’t.

“Would you prefer it if I was human?” he asks, and the words come out choked and forced and wrong. “Would—Would we have gotten together quicker if I was?”

“No,” Gavin says, “I don’t think we would have been together at all.”

“Why?”

Gavin laughs a little, humorless and broken, “Because you wouldn’t be you.”

“And you like me?”

“Fuck, Connor,” he whispers, leaning upwards to press a kiss against his LED. “I adore you, and sometimes that feels like an underestimate.”

He wraps his arms around Gavin, holds him tight like he was held last night. It feels like the only thing keeping him from falling apart is his hold on Gavin right now, and he cries and cries and cries. It is not a break. He is not going to shatter into a million pieces because he’s crying, and the tears themselves are a mix between happy and sad and frustrated and _happy._

 

~~Here is the problem with Connor:~~

He is a terrible chef. He has no reason to be a good one—he’s an android. And, Gavin would reason, it would make sense if Connor _was_ good at cooking. It is basic knowledge. Perfect measurements. Things that he should know, remember.

But he doesn’t care. He likes to watch Connor cook. He likes to watch him laugh and exclaim and gasp at all the things he’s done wrong even though he’s “followed the instructions perfectly”. It is a completely new side to him, one that Gavin never would have seen otherwise.

 

~~Here is the problem with Gavin:~~

He steals the blankets. Every night, Connor will lay down, curled up with one and he will find by morning that Gavin has stolen every inch of it, his own dropped to the floor. It is ridiculous and vaguely annoying. Connor doesn’t need blankets, he doesn’t need warmth.

And he doesn’t care. He likes how Gavin looks when he is wrapped up in a blanket, like he’s been tucked in. He likes to watch him struggle his way out of the tangled mess he’s created. It is completely silly and stupid but it makes Connor laugh and smile and he knows he never would have this moment with anyone else but Gavin.

 

Here is the problem with the two of them:

_There isn’t one._

They fight, but over things about who’s stolen the other’s clothing, about Gavin’s terrible addiction to coffee and the amount of sugar he puts in them, about board games and video games and who’s place to spend the night and what to name the stray cat Gavin and Connor have tried to lure home every night the last three weeks.

They are both so much happier together than either of them could hope for. They are both so much more in love with each other than they previously expected. Connor’s LED stays blue, and Gavin kisses it every night and every morning with a quiet _I love you_ whispered against his temple and Connor traces his scars carefully, reminding him again and again that he loves Gavin, too.

**Author's Note:**

> [hmu on my tumblr](https://norchloe.tumblr.com/) | music;  
> I Tried Getting High - Unlike Pluto  
> Looking to Closely - Fink  
> Perth (Deluxe) - Bon Iver


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